“Public confidence and trust that the police will respond is breaking down.”

The PAC noted the Home Office accepted its formula for allocating funding for commissioners was out of date in 2015 but its work to review this stopped in early 2017.

“The department [still] has no firm plans in place for [up-dating the formula] and tells us that reform of the funding formula cannot be rushed,” the report stated.

But with the department’s “lack of a comprehensive picture of all the demands” forces are under they are “subject to crude cuts across the board”.

The MPs added: “Forces are feeling the pressure of ‘cost shunting’ as cuts to other areas of public spending, such as health, are passed onto policing because it is so often the first line of response.”

Only a quarter of emergency and priority incidents the police responded to were crime-related, the PAC found.

But there was no comparable data on how much it costs forces to respond to non-crime related incidents, such as mental health crisis, the report concluded.

Violent crime and sexual offences were increasing as “forces are dealing with more incidents which are not crime related”, it added.

In its report, the PAC also suggested the Home Office’s ‘top-slicing’ of 11% of police funding for national programmes – such as police technology programmes – was not being used effectively.

“This cannot continue,” Hillier said. “Government must show leadership and get on with fixing the flaws at the heart of its approach to policing.

“In particular the Home Office must improve its understanding of the real-world demands on police, and use this information to inform its bid for funding from the Treasury. And when it secures that funding, it must distribute it effectively.”

2015 Public Finance. Public Finance is published on behalf of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy by Redactive Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved. Reproduction of any part is not allowed without written permission. Redactive, 17-18 Britton Street, London, EC1M 5TP